Rosen: Trump haters exceed the president in hyperbole

I recognize that there are Trumpeters for whom Donald Trump can do no wrong. I also know and admire high-minded conservatives who simply can’t tolerate his ideological shortcomings and his style and antics. Some of them are so-called “Never-Trumpers,” but I disagree with their response. I voted for him, with no regrets. As a life-long Republican and practical, mainstream, conservative who revered Ronald Reagan, I’ve come to terms with President Trump. I can’t say I admire him, but what he’s accomplished in office as a matter of policy and personnel (especially in the judiciary) is a far sight better than what Hillary Clinton and the radical progressive coalition she’d have represented would have done.

President Trump

I recall how Democrats, leftists and the liberal media reviled, scorned and unfairly treated Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush (not so much George H. W. Bush, an otherwise fine man who won liberal favor for backpedaling on some of Reagan’s polices). But the behavior of Trump’s critics on the left and in the media has sunken opposition-derangement-syndrome to new lows.

It started immediately after the election, even before Trump’s inauguration, with the raging anti-Trump “Resistance” movement. That very name was an outrageous misuse of a term that originally described the courageous effort of French freedom fighters “resisting” the brutal Nazi occupation of their homeland in World War II.

As space here is limited, I’ll deal with just a few of the hyperbolic charges leveled at Trump by his hysterical haters.

─ “Trump’s criticism of the media undermines freedom of speech.” No it doesn’t. The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or of the press. Under Trump, what laws of this kind have been made? On the contrary, the liberal media vilify Trump on a daily basis. What newspapers have been shut down or journalists thrown in jail? And by what authority are the media above criticism or rebuttal for what they say?

─ “Trump threatens our democracy” Nonsense. He took office after a free and fair election. Two years later, the 2018 midterm election won victories for Democrats over Republicans in states (like Colorado) nationwide. Democrats also took control of the U.S. House and have been blocking funding for Trump’s border wall, Republican legislation and have been badgering Trump ever since with hearings, demands, subpoenas and threats of impeachment. Sure looks like democracy at work, for better or worse. Moreover, unelected liberal judges have been staying or overturning numerous Trump executive orders.

─ “Trump is another Hitler.” So, you say Trump is a ruthless, omnipotent dictator? Was there something like a Reichstag Fire in the Capitol that I missed, followed by a takeover of the government? Has the FBI been turned into the Gestapo? Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent two years investigating Trump and interrogating and indicting his associates. And it’s Trump who’s been the victim of some biased anti-Trump operatives at the upper levels of the FBI.

What has Trump created in the Republican Party that’s the equivalent of the Waffen-SS in Hitler’s Nazi Party? Ironically, it’s the crazies on the violent left, like Antifa radicals, who behave like Nazi Brown Shirts. Has Trump conducted a Kristallnacht attack on Jews and Jewish property? Where are his concentration and extermination camps? Or the gas chambers and ovens?

And, no, the current detention centers for illegal migrants and asylum seekers near the Mexican border are nothing like Nazi concentration camps, as some deranged Trump critics have claimed. The Nazis enslaved, tortured and murdered German Jews and others who had broken no laws, many of whom tried to flee Germany. Those now in border detention centers are desperate to escape their countries and get into ours.

Before leftists idiotically throw around the word “Nazi” to brand anyone to their right they disagree with politically, they should take a trip to the Auschwitz museum to see what Nazism really looked like. Compared to Hitler, Trump is a pussycat.

─ “Trump hates immigrants.” Not true. He’s opposed to illegal immigration and unlimited immigration across an “open border.” As for the current wave of asylum seekers from Central America, most don’t qualify for asylum under our laws which limit asylum to refugees who face persecution, specifically and exclusively, on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Not because of gang violence or poverty in their country.

Our compassion is commendable, but taking in all the world’s poor and oppressed is beyond our means and contrary to our national interest.

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for CompleteColorado.com.